A Traitor in the Family

by Nicholas Searle

  ‘Yes, apparently. We’ll attack it, though. Examine how they acquired each piece of information, look for procedural errors. But all these recordings and the video footage …’

  Francis knew he could not afford to assist Harriet King too assiduously. He could not risk his dealings with Richard Mercer in Singapore coming to light. He did not at all want the job of explaining that away.

  He would find out on his own. Whatever it took. He would conduct his own tout hunt, from within prison. Eventually he would find out and have his vengeance. At the moment vengeance sounded a very satisfactory word for it. Biblical. Righteous. Violent.

  ‘What’s clear,’ said Harriet without raising her head, ‘is that they’ve known about this from the get-go. In a lot of detail. The resources they were able to put in. The recording devices and cameras at the flat in Birmingham. The fact they tracked the truck from Ireland. The armed police teams already in place at the service station. They were well prepared. Any ideas?’

  1995

  * * *

  16

  ‘Well, then,’ said Kenny, and sat back and smiled. ‘You understand we have to do a very thorough investigation.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I top up your tea for you?’

  ‘No thank you. Hardly touched this one. No, we have to find out what went wrong. So we have to speak to a lot of people. Put together a sequence of events.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Including you, Bridget.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Nothing to be concerned about. Just a few simple questions. That’s all.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘It’s for the sake of completeness. I’m sure you want this cleared up as much as we do. Find out what put Francis behind bars.’

  ‘Of course. But you see, I don’t know anything. Francis never talked to me …’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t have done. It’ll have been his way of protecting you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All I’m doing is building up a picture of what happened before and after he went over. A lot’ll be irrelevant, trivial. But it may just fit in with the bigger picture and tell us something new. That all right by you, Bridget?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Then, more boldly: ‘Yes, of course it is, Kenny.’

  ‘Now, Bridget, Mikey came to stay for a couple of nights.’

  ‘It was strange. No one’s ever come and stayed before.’

  ‘What did they talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I knew it must be to do with …’

  ‘Business?’

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t hear a word. Francis told me to stay in the kitchen and I did.’

  ‘For two days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t pick up anything by chance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Weren’t curious? Weren’t tempted to listen at the door?’

  ‘Certainly not. Francis is always very clear with me about … business.’

  ‘Did you go the shops or anything?’

  ‘No. Francis told me not to leave the house and I didn’t. I had me radio. And me book.’

  ‘What did you eat?’

  ‘Eat?’

  ‘Yes. If Mikey landed without you knowing he’d be there you might not have had enough food in the house.’

  ‘Francis come home the night before with a couple of bags of frozen stuff. Told me I wasn’t to go anywhere. We did run out of milk. Had to have black tea.’

  ‘Did you use the phone at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So no contact with anyone? No visitors?’

  ‘Not until Thomas from the village –’

  ‘We’ll get to that in a minute. Did you speak to Mikey at all?’

  ‘Just to say hello in the morning. And maybe a couple of words when I brought tea or food in.’

  ‘Where did he sleep?’

  ‘In the spare room. We have only the two bedrooms.’

  ‘Did you go in there at all?’

  ‘No. Not until he left.’

  ‘Did he leave anything in there?’

  ‘No. Not a thing.’

  ‘Did the boys have the odd drink, now, Bridget? I know Francis likes the odd drop. Maybe a beer at the end of the day?’

  ‘No. There was none in the house. Francis didn’t get none.’

  ‘What did Francis tell you about what he and Mikey were up to?’

  ‘Nothing. He never does.’

  ‘You must have been curious.’

  ‘No. And if I had been there’d be no point. I couldn’t ask him.’

  ‘Nothing about something big?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘About going over to the other side?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘All right. What did you make of all this, Bridget?’

  ‘Make of it?’

  ‘What did you think they were doing, Francis and Mikey?’

  ‘Nothing. I had no idea.’

  ‘You must have wondered.’

  ‘I already said. I’ve been with Francis all these years. I’ve learned not to wonder …’

  ‘Aye. Well. Tell me what happened later.’

  ‘When the police come?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Thomas come up from the village and knocked the door. I answered and Francis spoke to him. There was a bit of a commotion.’

  ‘A commotion?’

  ‘Yes. Thomas stayed outside and Francis was thinking about what to do. He went in the sitting room and I heard voices.’

  ‘Francis and Mikey? Could you hear what was said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were they arguing?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But they were anxious.’

  ‘Could Thomas hear any of this going on?’

  ‘I doubt it. He was outside the front door.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘In the end Francis come out with Mikey. Mikey got his bag and went off with Thomas. Francis told me to go back in the kitchen. A few minutes later he said he was going out and I was to expect visitors.’

  ‘You knew what that meant?’

  ‘Yes. The police.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Francis went.’

  ‘Did he take anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. It all happened so fast.’

  ‘And when did he come back?’

  ‘About four hours later.’

  ‘Did he say where he’d been?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What happened while he was away?’

  ‘Well, you know …’

  ‘I don’t. Tell me.’

  ‘They came. This Mr Donnelly. They were asking after Francis. I told them I didn’t know where he was.’

  ‘Did they ask any other questions?’

  ‘Where had he been recently? Who had he seen? What was he doing? I said I didn’t know to everything and they stopped asking questions.’

  ‘What did you make of this Donnelly?’

  ‘I didn’t like him at all.’

  ‘Did he ask you anything else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like asking you to meet him again, or giving you any phone numbers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. And that was it?’

  ‘Apart from the search. There was a whole bunch of them, police, soldiers. They made a terrible mess.’

  ‘And did they find anything?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But they kept me in the hall.’

  ‘And have they been in touch with you since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No one else either?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you haven’t contacted them?’

  ‘No. Why would I do that? The London police interviewed me the other day.’

  ‘We know about that. You had your lawyer there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And since then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Anne-Marie Shaw’s been round to the
house several times.’

  ‘I know. I just locked the door and hid away upstairs. I couldn’t bear to see no one.’

  ‘When did she come?’

  ‘No idea. I just lay on me bed and come down for me meals. I lost track of time.’

  ‘Someone saw you at the bus stop.’

  ‘I had to go the supermarket.’

  ‘Don’t close us out, Bridget. We want to help.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Now is there anything else you can think of, Bridget? Anything else that may be of relevance?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘All right, then. I’m sorry to ask you all these questions. You must think, what’s the point?’

  ‘No. You have to do what’s necessary.’

  ‘We need to be thorough. Listen, what we need to do now is to go through everything bit by bit and then I may have to recheck a few details with you. Would that be all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Guilty. It was predictable. An English court, with all its prejudices. Then again, he was guilty in their terms; with all that amassed evidence, he’d have found it difficult to contest the fact. All those taped conversations in the flat. The video of them meeting Jonjo at Cairnryan. The recordings from the car. Even Jonjo instructing him in the cab of the lorry on setting the device. Kevin and him bickering over the route to the target. They’d been made to look like fools each day in court. Karl preening himself outside the flat. The Asian shopkeeper’s testimony of his bizarre behaviour as he picked up the key. Antony’s head swivelling in the car, on film, as they waited outside. The episode with the old drunk. It was a soap opera for the tabloids and he’d been the hapless leader of this bunch of wasters. They were clowns. But guilty clowns.

  Forty-one years, though. The verdict had been returned within twenty minutes. Indecent haste, his barrister had said outside court as he mooted an appeal. Why bother sending the jury out if it was such a foregone conclusion?

  Just words. But forty-one years. He’d expected it, known it to be the going rate, but when the judge said it: Christ. He couldn’t quite believe it. He’d be well into his seventies when he came out. There’d be plenty of time to ruminate on who was responsible. He’d find out, even from here, and he’d let them know back home.

  Harriet King had met him the day after the court case ended.

  ‘I’m sorry, Francis,’ she’d said, her jolly-hockey-sticks smile absent.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he replied.

  ‘Joe Geraghty sent you this note,’ she said, and passed him a piece of paper.

  It contained the usual platitudes. Noble sacrifice blah-di-blah, look after your wife blah-di-blah, doing our best for you blah-di-blah, your family are proud of you blah-di-blah. Joe wasn’t the one facing a forty-one-year stretch.

  ‘I can’t let you keep it,’ she said when he’d had time to read it.

  He handed it back. ‘I understand,’ he said, and he did.

  Now he was in his cell in Whitemoor, settled into a routine that, with the odd minor alteration over time, would see him through the next four decades. It was comfortable, though, it had that going for it, but he looked to the future with dulled eyes.

  He couldn’t stop thinking. Mikey had been conveniently pulled by the RUC two weeks before the job but at his first hearing had been released on a technicality. From a Belfast court. They said he’d high-tailed it to the Free State that very day. That’s who it was. Mikey had been talking to the Brits.

  She visited him once in that prison in Cambridgeshire. She was becoming used to being on her own. Without him, without Sarah. She booked a budget flight to Stansted airport and took a bus to Dublin airport, after someone from the village gave her a lift to Dundalk. In England she caught a train from the airport to March. There she took a taxi to the prison. The taxi driver, as she climbed in, was cheery and joked with her. Once he heard her Irish accent he said nothing more and glared at her when she paid her fare.

  She was processed, in a way that suggested to her that the sins of the prisoner would certainly be visited on all his acquaintances, especially those with the temerity to visit him. She joined a group of other visitors in the holding area, none of whom she recognized, none of whom talked to the others. It was a bleak room with hard seats. Young women with long, stringy hair bowed their heads and picked at their loose ends. Elderly men sat upright and stiff, twiddling their tweed caps in their hands. Children looked bored.

  After forty minutes a severe-looking guard came in with a clipboard, making ticks on a list as people shuffled through morosely, muttering their names. Bridget was examined. Her handbag and pockets were emptied of anything that could be construed as either dangerous or contraband and she was given a list of instructions to which she would need to adhere. The guard promptly read the list out loud to her as if she did not credit her with the intelligence to read.

  Francis was a prisoner under special conditions, which meant that Bridget had to submit herself to an intimate search. This was conducted by the female guard in a cubicle, not exactly violently but with a peremptory brusqueness that made Bridget blush full-red with embarrassment and shame. And then into the room itself.

  Francis sat at a table, his left foot stamping rhythmically. He was staring at the floor. She approached and sat down, and smiled. He looked up at her but did not return her warmth.

  ‘Got here all right, then, did you?’ he asked.

  ‘I did, yes,’ she said quietly. ‘And how are you, Francis?’

  He looked at her with bewilderment and she thought as usual he was about to start. But he lowered his eyes and said, ‘I’m all right, I suppose. Considering.’

  ‘I brought you some things. But they took them off me. They have to check them. They said you’d get them sometime.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  ‘Me ma and da send their regards.’

  He stifled a laugh. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Joe sent his boy down to see me –’

  ‘Don’t you be talking about Joe here,’ he hissed. ‘They’re listening to every word we say.’

  ‘Sorry, Francis.’

  ‘OK. No need to get het up.’

  ‘I’m doing all right. It’s strange being on me own. Francis?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I’ll try to come and visit you as much as I can. Why won’t they send you back to Ireland? There’s Maghaberry.’

  ‘To make it as difficult as possible for us. To make me suffer. They’re vindictive, the English.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose they must be.’

  ‘Anyways, I don’t want you visiting. I don’t want you coming here. I don’t want you seeing me.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll only come a few times a year. Once or twice. For your birthday and before Christmas.’

  ‘No. I need to do this on my own.’

  ‘But Francis. It’s –’

  ‘Don’t you think I know how long it is? I don’t want you coming here. You should do something with your life. Find someone. Go live somewhere else.’

  ‘And why would I want to do that? I’ll write you and in a couple of months you’ll feel different. I can start coming then. I’ll put some money by.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But Francis, if you won’t have me visiting, I’ll wait for you. I don’t want anything else.’

  He shook his head.

  It was only a few days after she had returned to Ireland that Kenny visited again.

  ‘Joe would have dearly liked to come and visit,’ he said.

  ‘That’s very kind. But I know how busy a man he must be.’

  ‘That’s true enough. But he would like to see you nevertheless. In fact …’

  ‘Yes, Kenny?’

  ‘He’s down south today. Caught up in a meeting. Not so far away.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘About an hour’s drive. If you’d care to do him the service of coming over with me, he’d love t
o see you. That is, if you have the time.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Of course if you’ve something on Joe’ll understand. It was just on the off chance. I can drive you over now and we’ll be back in no time at all.’

  ‘No, Kenny. Of course. It’d be nice to see Joe.’

  ‘Let’s be going, then, eh?’

  So this was how it happened. A few pleasantries, a lie told softly, pull the front door to with a click and that would be it. No goodbyes, no calls to Sarah, no histrionics, no struggles as you’re forced into a van. This was it, that click of the front door you’d heard a thousand times before, and into Kenny’s nice car. Disappeared.

  ‘So you’ve been across to see Francis,’ he said by way of conversation on the drive over.

  ‘I have, yes.’

  ‘And how’s he doing?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘It must be hard.’

  ‘It is. Not as hard for me as it is for him. You cope. You have to.’

  ‘Still. Can’t be easy.’

  ‘It’s not. But there’s no choice. I have to do the right thing.’

  ‘Aye. That you do.’

  The place was beyond Monaghan somewhere. Bridget had no real idea where they were, what with all the turns and the narrow roads with their tall, dark shadowing hedges. It felt as if her imprisonment had already begun.

  It did not surprise her that there were no houses nearby. There were numerous anonymous outbuildings but nothing that indicated this was still a working farm. The house itself was large and built of red brick. There were no cars on the drive.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Kenny.

  The front door was not locked.

  ‘Hello,’ he shouted jauntily as he walked through the large, parquet-floored hall.

  ‘In here,’ came Joe Geraghty’s voice.

  They walked into a large dining room, with dark, old furniture, lightened by beams of sun filtered by net curtains.

  ‘Well now, Bridget,’ said Joe Geraghty, ‘how’re you doing now? How are you bearing up? I was so sorry to hear about Francis. He’s like a younger brother to me, sure he is.’

  ‘I know, Mr Geraghty. I’m all right.’

  ‘Now, now, Bridget. It’s Joe, you know that. So, before we have a chat, can I fetch you anything? Cup of tea? Coffee?’

  ‘No thanks, Joe.’

  ‘Right, then. Kenny?’